It’s not a cheap project to run—because of permafrost, growing soil has to be flown to the community. But Vuntut Gwitchin staff say the garden is important for the community, to provide both a place for people to come together and fresh, locally-grown food. Old Crow isn’t accessible by road, so groceries arrive on a plane and they’re expensive. “Because we’re so far north, there’s a sense of pride in what can be grown,” says Lindsay Johnston, the First Nation’s recreation coordinator. “Here’s this good local food. You know where it came from.” The garden is a grassroots effort to increase Old Crow’s food security and affordability.

Johnston says produce availability and prices have improved since a new co-op grocery store opened in town, but she admits costs are still much higher than in southern Canada. A pineapple, for example, costs $9. A two-litre carton of milk costs about $7.99. A bag of cherries costs $12 per pound.

Food’s hefty price tag is a problem in northern communities across the country, from the Yukon to Nunavut to Labrador. As an attempted remedy, the federal government introduced the Nutrition North program in 2011, offering retailers subsidies on staple perishable items such as eggs, milk, meat, and frozen fruits and vegetables. Retailers are then responsible for selling these goods at a discounted price.

But an audit completed by the Attorney General of Canada in the fall of 2014 found that Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada (AANDC) hadn’t properly verified whether retailers were doing this. It’s not the only Northern issue that critics argue the government has bungled. They point to a overall flawed approach to dealing with Canada’s massive North.

Take, for instance, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s six-day sojourn across the region, which last year cost taxpayers more than $786,000—at the same time many Northerners struggle daily to pay for food and housing. Harper’s annual tour of the North has been described by some as nothing more than a photo op, a hurried trip of funding announcements, staged photos with beautiful backdrops, and little else. Yet Harper claims to love the North; he’s said before his tour is the highlight of his summer. (This year, he didn’t embark on the journey; instead he’ll be focusing on the October election, according to reports.)

On these tours in the past, Harper has posed for photos wearing a parka, firing a gun, and eating seal meat. He’s called the expansive area “a great treasure house” due to its plentiful minerals and resources. But does his emphasis on resource development and Arctic sovereignty come at the expense of giving proper attention to the North’s social issues, such as health and lack of affordable housing? Reporters have questioned him about this, and about whether he’s left social problems up to the territorial governments—but have received few satisfactory answers. Mental health services remain a grave concern for northern residents, particularly in Nunavut, where the suicide rate is the highest in Canada. The territory of 36,000 experienced 45 suicides in 2013, a record number, and 27 in 2014, including that of an 11-year-old boy. Yet, on his Northern tour last summer, Harper made no mention of mental health, even though he stopped in the suicide capital.

“Our government understands that Canadians who live, work and raise families in this part of the country face unique challenges,” the prime minister said at the tour’s kick-off in Whitehorse. “Let’s call them Canadian challenges because after all Canada is the North and the North is Canada.” The key to transforming these challenges into opportunities, Harper said, is—apparently—scientific knowledge
and discovery, going on to announce a new $17-million Arctic program through the National Research Council.

The cries for an inquiry into missing and murdered aboriginal women are also heightened in the North. Rates of violence against women are significantly higher in the territories than in the rest of Canada: four times, nine times and 13 times the national average in the Yukon, NWT, and Nunavut, respectively. Despite this, Harper has rejected calls for such an inquiry. While in Whitehorse last summer, he said the country’s 1,000-plus cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls aren’t a “sociological phenomenon,” but a crime. Opposition leaders and aboriginal organizations quickly, and harshly, criticized Harper for his remarks. Marian Horne, president of the Yukon Aboriginal Women’s Council, told the Whitehorse Star his comments showed the prime minister’s “flagrant disregard” for First Nations people and their well-being.

Yukon First Nations chiefs were also angered over the federal government’s Bill S-6. Approved in the House of Commons in June, it contains amendments to the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Act. The chiefs have vowed to fight the bill in court, arguing they had no input on four amendments they say violate their land claim agreements and threaten the independence of the assessment board. And in Nunavut, trouble is brewing between the territory’s planning commission and the Harper government. Last year, the commission sued, accusing Ottawa of trying to interfere in a land-use plan for future development in the territory. Created out of the 1993 Nunavut Land Claim Agreement, the commission alleges AANDC refused to provide $1.7 million needed to conduct a final public hearing on the plan, required before it can become law. Then head of the commission, Percy Kabloona, told the Canadian Press at the time that the federal government has shown little support for Inuit management of their own lands.

Meanwhile, back in Old Crow, residents continue to tend to and take pride in their garden. Caitlin Cottrell-Lingenfelter, the Vuntut Gwitchin’s director of health and social programs, says she understands the premise behind Nutrition North, but it just hasn’t worked for people in the country’s remote communities. Bluntly put, she says, it’s failed. The same could be said for much of Harper’s actions, and inactions, in the North.

Illustration by Caitlin Taguibao

On the front lines of the North’s rising food crisis

A young, Arctic Bay protestor, about as tall as a baby tree, appears snug in pink mittens and a fur-trimmed coat. Their hands clasp onto a rectangular-shaped cardboard sign: “I need milk.” For Nunavut residents, two litres of milk can cost as much as $14.

Canada’s North is in crisis. The short phrase “food insecurity”—as blunt as the high-price stickers—comes with a complex history of the North’s experience with Westernization, poverty, and isolation. The term itself refers to inaccessibility of healthy and affordable food. In Nunavut, there is a 70 percent rate of household food insecurity, over eight times higher than Canada’s average household. Essentially, this means many Nunavummiut go hungry every day. And on June 9, 2012, they decided to stop suffering in silence.

That day, 30 members of Feeding my Family, a Facebook community of Northerners founded in that same month to bring awareness to the area’s high food costs, took their protests offline. Gathered in front of Iqaluit’sbig box grocery store,NorthMart, the group cheered, chanted, and waved protest signs. Within four days of the inaugural peaceful protest, Feeding my Family’s online member count jumped from around 4,000 to 19,000—over half of Nunavut’s population.Two years and five protests later, the Facebook page is updated daily with posts from Northern citizens and angered Canadians who want to help.

Feeding My Family creator,Leesee Papatsie, who launched the group as an answer to the territory’s outrageous food costs, says that she expected to only do one protest. However, after the first protest, community members expressed a desire to do more. If you were to look up the word “protest” in an Inuit dictionary, she says, there would be no definition. Though speaking against injustice is “not traditionally who [Inuit] are,” she adds, “You look at those prices and think, ‘Who in the world would put those prices?’”

Today, the group continues as a “wall” of shame: members post pictures of food, household items, diapers, hygiene products, showing their high costs. On May 29, 2012, Papatsie shared some of the group’s first photos showing the high cost of food in Nunavut: $16 for cranberry juice, $11.65 for four litres of milk and $13.69 for 2.2 kilograms of flour. Feeding My Family now has 21,000 members. Yet, prices have not improved. In September 2014, for instance, a member posted a photo of an Orville Redenbacher’s 10-bowl pop-up popcorn that cost $20.59. Ontarians have the luxury of visiting their local Walmart to buy the same product for $6.97.

Papatsie says she understands food costs in the North will be higher—they’re in an isolated area with scant resources for infrastructure—but she maintains retailers hold some responsibility when it comes to pricing: “They are ripping people off. Period.”

Chris Klar, who manages one of the two independently-owned retail stores in Arviat, Nunavut, located in the Kivalliq Region, says that isn’t the case. At Klar’s store, customers can buy a pound of lean ground beef for $4.99, an 18 carton of eggs for $4.99 and four litres of milk for $6.79. This is, he adds, thanks to competition—unlike other Northern retailers that might be the only store in the community, his store, Eskimo Point Lumber Supply, can abide by the laws of supply and demand.

Even so, Klar contends many people who complain about food prices in the North are actually misinformed. Some foods, he adds, such as flavoured water and most “junk food,” are not covered under the Nutrition North Canada (NNC) federal subsidy program. Introduced in April 2011, NCC replaced the former Food Mail program.NCC differs in two key areas: unlike Food Mail, it only subsidizes so-called “healthy” foods, and, also unlike Food Mail, it passes those savings directly to the retailers. Subsidies are based on the cost per kilogram of a particular food, multiplied by the kilograms of the product. Stores are supposed to pass savings onto the customers. Some indicate what a product would cost if there were no subsidy; others don’t.

Reasons or blame aside, some just want to help. The grassroots group Helping Our Northern Neighbours works with members of Feeding My Family to connect those seeking food donations with those eager to donate. As of September 2014, the group’s donor list (those waiting for donations) consisted of 106 families. It includes elders, single parents, couples with children, grandparents raising grandchildren, and extended families living together, according to B.C. resident and group director Jennifer Gwilliam. “We need to get our name and mission out there so that we can reach many more potential donors,” Gwilliam says, “I hate having to make people wait a long time for help.” People are often desperate, she adds, and many tell her they go without food for a day or more so they can feed their children. Some days an entire family may not eat.

The Government of Nunavut has also created an initiative to alleviate hunger and poverty. The Nunavut Food Security Coalition—which includes Feeding My Family and grocery chain North West Company—released the Nunavut Food Security Strategy and Action Plan in May 2014. The plan is designed to “provide Nunavummiut with an adequate supply of safe, culturally preferable, affordable, nutritious food” and to also promote traditional values and  and environmental sustainability. The Coalition has identified six focus points, including food production and legislation, alongside several objectives, such as enhancing school nutrition programming.

Sara Statham, the territorial food security coordinator for the Government of Nunavut, admits there are still a lot of “big picture items” that need to be addressed—such as the loss of traditional culture—but believes the plan is a start. Grocery stores, for example, she says, are relatively new in the North. Papatsie adds it’s a common misconception for southerners to think the Inuit can easily harvest food.Many are finding it harder to keep up with the demanding prices of harvesting country food, such as caribou, char and berries. Foundational changes must be made, says Statham. “But in the meantime,” she adds, “we can do what we can in terms of ensuring people have access to resources that can help them in the short term.”

In Feb. 2014, Samara, a Canadian research group, nominated Papatsie for their “Everyday Political Citizen Award.” Papatsie accepted the nomination with hesitation. “I didn’t create Feeding My Family for me. I created it for the people. The people who keep posting pictures and the people who keep the site alive,” she says. “I know kids go hungry daily. I know people struggle to put food on the table meal-by-meal, day-by-day. That’s who the site is created for.”

The 2009 inaugural class of Dechinta Bush University. Photo courtesy Dechinta.

Back in the 1960s, a group of high-minded northern and southern Canadians had a collective revelation: if the North ever wanted to succeed, it desperately needed a university. Toronto-based lawyer and retired Air Force general Richard Rohmer spearheaded the idea, first lobbying locals and politicians, and later penning a draft for a bricks-and-mortar institution. While the resulting plan led to the creation of colleges in all three territories, 50 years later all that is left of the University of Northern Canada is a couple of failed proposals, a worsening brain drain to the south, and an acute need for higher education and trained professionals in a booming region.

Dechinta Bush University Centre for Research and Learning is looking to change all that. Its goal: to provide a post-secondary liberal arts education to northerners at home. Founded in 2009, the aboriginal-run centre offers five courses in a 12-week semester, combining academic standards with indigenous knowledge to offer a comprehensive look at northern politics and land preservation.

“Living off the land and the land-based approaches are really integral to all the courses we deliver,” says Kyla Kakfwi Scott, program manager for Dechinta. In learning and using land-based practices, she adds, students come to understand the material being taught through the academic portions of the course.

Subjects covered include the history of self-determination of the Dene First Nations, decolonization practices, writing and communications, environmental sustainability, and community health, with undergraduate credit granted through the University of Alberta. Each course is taught by academics from the north and south and cultural experts, such as resident elders and guest lecturers.

Each term, up to 25 students, aboriginal and non-aboriginal, northerners and southerners, recent high school graduates to retirees, kick off courses by spending five weeks at home working through assigned readings. After that, they travel by plane to Blachford Lake Lodge, located about 220 kilometres east of Yellowknife, NWT, where classes are held outdoors. While not a degree-granting institution, the bush university is expanding to host one master’s and one PhD student per year who want to do research based out of the Dechinta program, with the goal of having their own masters programming down the road.

“The North has a lot of really interesting insight and expertise to offer, not just to its own residents but to people from around the world,” says Kakfwi Scott. “But for northern people the idea of being able to stay close to home and learn about the things that you’re dealing with every day and have that be recognized as being valuable and teachable at home would be phenomenal.”

Alana Kronstal's new public awareness campaign aims to cut Nunavut's sky-high smoking rates.

On the streets of Iqaluit, cheery Alana Kronstal is known as “the tobacco lady.” Young and old, everyone seems to know the 31-year-old, who is leading the charge against smoking in Nunavut, home of the highest smoking rates in Canada. “Nowhere in Canada has a campaign been launched starting with such a majority of smokers,” Kronstal says. “We’re trying to do something that hasn’t been done yet.”

The statistics are staggering when compared to the rest of the country: according to Statistics Canada, 53 percent of the Nunavut population smokes and private studies cite numbers as high as 70 percent among the territory’s predominantly Inuit population. Children as young as two pick butts off the street to imitate their parents. Studies show up to 80 percent of the territory’s pregnant women smoke.

Luckily for the anti-smoking faction, the federal government has granted Kronstal and her team $700,000 for a new public awareness campaign. Tentatively called Tobacco Has No Place Here, the PSA will focus on challenging the cultural norm of smoking in Nunavut. Kronstal’s team has hired two firms (one local) to grab the territory’s attention through social media buzz, YouTube vignettes, community feasts during the campaign’s rollout in January, an art installation in Iqaluit, and more.

“We’re a small community spread over a vast landscape. People know each other well,” says Kronstal, who has worked on smaller-scale campaigns in the Northwest Territories. “If we share personal stories, put a face to this issue, celebrate individuals who’ve successfully quit smoking, we’re getting somewhere.”

While sky-high lung cancer and tuberculosis rates are often overshadowed by Nunavut’s other struggles—high suicide rates, substance abuse, isolation, and poverty—Kronstal believes her campaign can change lives: “It’s having a very real impact on people’s health and the life expectancy of an entire population.”

Nunavut’s campaign is currently partially funded under the Federal Tobacco Control Strategy. Since the strategy launched 10 years ago, nationwide smoking rates have dropped to 21 percent, leaving the government to wonder if it still needs to invest in getting people to quit. The funding strategy is currently up for renewal, and Kronstal isn’t sure what will happen in Nunavut if it’s canned. “Is it a done deal now? Obviously for some of the provinces, the issue [of smoking] has changed,” she says. “But for people in Nunavut, it’s not a dead issue. It’s not an issue that’s been solved yet.”

A Canadian Auto Workers volunteer helps install a new wellhead in Little Salmon Carmacks in 2007. Photo courtesy CAW.

If you were to turn on a tap in the First Nation of Little Salmon Carmacks, Yukon, your cup might run over with gasoline, fecal matter, and worse (yes, there’s worse). It’s been this way for years, at least going as far back as 1991—the first year of comprehensive water testing.

The problems in Little Salmon Carmacks are emblematic of water problems in many First Nation communities across Canada. Drinking water not fit for human consumption has been, and continues to be, endemic in First Nation communities. For northern First Nations problems are made worse by systemic issues rooted deeply in the structure of our government; caught in a jurisdictional no-man’s-land between Indian and Northern Affairs, the territorial governments, and other government departments charged with funding infrastructure and assisting First Nations, their cases get shuffled from one department to another until they are finally dropped.

The Little Salmon Carmacks First Nation is situated next to the non-First Nation municipality of Carmacks, approximately 180 kilometres north of Whitehorse. The self-governing community, home to 400 people, once had two large wells serving the entire community but, as standards were updated, one was declared too dangerous to use and closed. The remaining well serves 96 people; everyone else has to rely on their own, individual wells, each of which provides water to an average of three people.

The village has been on the same boil water advisory since January 2006, though temporary advisories have been issued to certain areas of the town since 2001, and some individual wells have been reporting E. coli and coliform contamination since 1991.

Even though the federal government has spent nearly $1 million on studies, and improvements to well water testing, treatment infrastructure, and operator training, the problems in Little Salmon Carmacks are not clearing up. Government solutions have not dealt with the central causes of contamination, and have proved to be no more than expensive Band-Aids. Disregarding the results of numerous studies it has funded to investigate the root causes of the community’s water problems, the government seems willing to only fund short-term solutions, such as treating the contaminated water with chlorine.

One government funded study notes that “of particular concern are the positive [bacteriological] results for wells which have had their well boxes upgraded and cleaned and wells shock chlorinated.” In particular, it says that from 1991 until the study was conducted in 2004, “positive bacteriological contamination has been reported for 36% of residential wells over the period of record, with 22% reporting contamination within the last year.” Studies have been clear as to why contamination keeps coming back: poorly constructed individual wells are easy to contaminate and hard to maintain. According to a 2008 report, most of the wells in Little Salmon Carmacks are too shallow, too close to septic tanks, and are drilled in sandy, permeable soil. The well heads are also located underground, in pits that let in surface water, which then stagnates and causes bacterial contamination.

Rodent feces, animal remains, and fuel spills also become trapped in the well pits, and when water levels rise, either from rain or spring run-off, the toxic cocktail overflows first into wells and then out of taps. These same wells were built by Indian and Northern Affairs Canada—some of them as recently as the ’90s—who now refuses to maintain them. Neither the federal nor the territorial government will fund repairs or upgrades to wells serving fewer than five people; both levels of government say that this is the responsibility of homeowners. The case continues to circulate INAC internally in a game of bureaucratic hot potato that has left the community in purgatory. Even more frustrating is the fact that the solution, pointed to even by government funded studies, is completely clear: a single pipe system—one big well, with a pipeline servicing most homes in the village—is described as the best and most cost-effective long-term solution to the village’s water problems. But no government department or funding program has accepted the community’s proposals to construct one.

An INAC spokesperson said that the single pipe system is “not considered cost effective to construct and maintain over the long term.” But this directly contradicts an INAC funded study conducted just one year earlier, which concluded that a single pipe system would produce cleaner, safer water—since the water can be treated and monitored from a single, central location—and would incur lower long-term maintenance costs.

Even the ministry’s own statistics are suspect. INAC keeps a database of water quality in First Nation communities, rating water as being at high, medium, or low risk for contamination. After a 2002 study of communities across Canada, Little Salmon Carmacks’s water was rated “high risk.” In 2006, INAC officials downgraded it to “medium risk,” citing new evaluations from 2003 and 2004, which Chief Skookum says never took place. One former INAC employee, who helped develop the database, stated that officials modified the Little Salmon Carmacks rating “without stepping foot” in the community.

In 2007, INAC proudly announced that “in the past 12 months the number of high risk water systems in First Nations communities has been reduced from 193 to 97.” That number has since been reduced to 49. The problem is not simply that the ministry appears to be moving the goalposts for the sake of public relations; a “high-risk” rating automatically obliges the federal government to evaluate water systems and fund repairs. Downgrade the rating, and that financial commitment vanishes, though the problem does not.

In Little Salmon Carmacks, the government’s lack of serious action proved nearly fatal. In a December 2005 community meeting at which government and First Nation representatives were present, the then Yukon Chief Medical Officer of Health—a territorial government official charged with issuing boil water orders—said, “I am confident that the water is not going to cause immediate health problems … I am convinced that the level of anxiety regarding the wells is too high.” Less than four weeks later, Elder Johnny Sam was airlifted to a Vancouver hospital for treatment of a bacterial infection so severe he had to remain there for four and a half months. His doctors linked his illness to his water consumption, and the First Nation issued its own boil water advisory on January 9, 2006.

“Someone just about died,” said Chief Skookum, who issued the 2006 advisory. “The government has got to show more effort in showing that they can step in and help with the cause and communicate— there’s not much of that at all.”

Chief Skookum isn’t the only one thinking that. A 2005 report by the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development (CESD) cited lack of government responsibility as a systemic problem directly related to the quality and safety of drinking water for First Nation communities. The CESD recommended that a new regulatory body be created to address the crisis. The government has acknowledged the problem but the steps it is taking have not won the support of Indigenous groups.

On May 26, 2010 the government introduced Bill S-11 in the federal Senate. The proposed legislation would set up a regulatory framework with jurisdictional clarity responsible for setting appropriate standards for the treatment and disposal of water. In its current incarnation, however, it applies only to reservations and not to self-governing nations (like Little Salmon Carmacks), although communities could opt in.

Critics argue that without a corresponding financial commitment, many First Nation communities will lack the resources to meet these guidelines, and fear they could be penalized for it. Irving Leblanc, the acting director of housing and infrastructure for the Assembly of First Nations (AFN), says that “by pushing this legislation forward, the government is setting up First Nations for failure.” He adds, “There’s been no consultation done on this bill.” Though the government has made some effort to discuss the bill with First Nations, many feel that their views and opinions were not heard, much less incorporated into the legislation.

In the meantime, private volunteers have proved to be more effective than the ministry that’s actually responsible for ensuring water quality in First Nation communities. In 2007 Little Salmon Carmacks got in touch with the AFN which, in turn, proposed a well revitalization project to the Canadian Autoworkers union. In May of 2008 CAW members arrived for their first of two summers helping the community upgrade and repair its water infrastructure.

The volunteers—skilled tradespeople, most from Ontario—extended the wells a metre above ground and put caps on them so only well water could enter. This altered the structure of the wells more drastically than previous repairs, elevating and sealing off the once festering, below ground well heads and well boxes. The volunteers also installed heater cables to prevent pipes from freezing in the winter and controllers to maximize energy efficiency. The project was initially supposed to take only one summer. However, at the end of their six weeks of work, only half of the intended 57 wells had been repaired. The union decided to extend the project and volunteers returned to the Yukon the following summer to finish what they started.

Mark McGregor, a millwright who works in Brampton, Ontario, and one of the volunteers during the second summer, says seeing the community and their infrastructure made him realize that “people up North are forgotten about.” He compared Little Salmon Carmacks’s situation to that of Walkerton, Ontario’s in 2000, saying the water was so dirty, “we wouldn’t even shower in it,” and that “sometimes it was brown coming out of the taps.”

The volunteers may have been able to improve the state of the village’s water infrastructure, but the deeper systemic problems remain.

Most critically, there is a shortage of qualified people to operate and repair the wells. A government report notes that there is “a severe shortage … of certified water-treatment systems operators in First Nations communities.” Yukon College offers courses that provide water operators with the knowledge they need to pass the Environmental Operators Certification Program, and the federal government does have funding available to cover the course fees of potential operators from Indigenous communities, but the mathematical requirements seem to be a barrier for many individuals.

“You have to be able to drive a truck and do the math,” Jordan Mullett, Little Salmon Carmacks’ only certified water technician, says. “Most people who are truck drivers are older guys, and they don’t really have their math or their algebra.”

Accordingly, Yukon College has set up a crash-course math course. “You can do it by video conference,” Mullett explains, “five half days in a row.” But despite these efforts, INAC representatives estimate that, for First Nation operators in the Yukon, “the pass rate over the past two years … is approximately 50 percent.”

“We’ve sent lots of people,” Mullett says, “but they always fail. We’ve sent everyone that we possibly can, and some people twice, three times, and they still don’t pass. And even though it’s no cost to us, there’s no point in sending someone for their third or fourth time.”

That leaves Mullett as the only certified operator in the village, one man monitoring dozens of wells—a dangerous ratio. And the story is repeated in communities across the North.

Despite mountains of evidence, much of it accumulated by its own branches, departments, and agents, the federal government has not acted strongly enough to improve water treatment in First Nation communities. No matter how many times the relationship between water quality and other quality of life issues (education, depression, general health, etc.) is spelled out, often by their own employees, politicians and senior bureaucrats have not taken the necessary steps to improve the quality of water in First Nation communities.

To aboriginal leaders, however, the link between water and overall quality of life is clear. The United Nations backed them up in July when the General Assembly passed a resolution affirming water and sanitation as human rights.

“This resolution establishes new international standards,” said Assembly of First Nations National Chief Shawn Atleo shortly after the vote (from which Canada abstained). It “compels Canada to work with First Nations to ensure our people enjoy the same quality of water and sanitation as the rest of Canada.” So far Atleo’s call has little attention from the federal government, leaving Little Salmon Carmacks, and many communities like it, to rely not on the ministry, but on the kindness of strangers.

A partial map of Canada's North, c. 1776. Province-like powers are needed to improve living conditions, but only if the negotiations are fair.

Territorial devolution is key to a successful North…

After decades at a frozen impasse, it appears the federal government’s position on devolving province-like responsibilities and powers to the Northwest Territories has finally thawed. In October, a draft agreement-in-principle between the feds and the territorial government was leaked to media, marking the NWT’s first small step toward taking control of its own land development, administration, and natural resources.

The potential benefits are huge. The territorial government estimates that over the last five years, more than $200 million in resource revenues flowed out of the territory to Ottawa. Had this money remained in the territory, it would have provided much needed funding to fight longstanding social and housing problems, which are major root causes of the NWT’s embarrassing crime rate, currently six times the national average. Plus, a devolution deal would likely move north hundreds of jobs that are now located in the south. Even a few jobs would substantially boost the territory’s poorest areas, says MLA Tom Beaulieu, who represents the tiny towns of Fort Resolution and Lutselk’e. “There would be a lot more money circulating,” he told the CBC, “and employment rates would be a lot better.”

…but not without aboriginal inclusion

Not so fast, say aboriginal governments. When news of the deal leaked, their opposition was loud, immediate, and nearly universal. Surprisingly, they’d been omitted from the bilateral negotiations; unsurprisingly, they weren’t happy about it. Many fear the agreement could transfer authority over their traditional lands to the territorial government. Of the seven groups currently party to the deal, only one has stated its support: the Inuvialuit, whose land claim encompasses the oil-rich Beaufort Delta. UPDATE: the agreement in principle was signed on January 26, 2011 by the federal and territorial governments and the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation; the other aboriginal governments did not sign and said they opposed the agreement.

Territorial officials won’t say whether they’ll continue without aboriginal support or with only a majority on board, like the Yukon did in 2003. In the meantime, Premier Floyd Roland has tried to circumvent opposition by telling aboriginal groups there is nothing legally binding within the agreement. Roland maintains the draft agreement, which he calls “a road map for future negotiations,” won’t negatively affect land claim agreements or future settlements; aboriginal leaders have told him to can the platitudes. Despite a recent meeting with chiefs—weirdly, outside the NWT, in Edmonton—Roland has been unable to break the deadlock. With a winter of discontent looming, it looks like the road toward self determination may once again freeze over.

North Mart in La Ronge, Saskatchewan. Larger retailers will benefit disproportionately from the new, privatized Nutrition North Canada program.

Changes to the government’s food subsidy program are making some in Northern Canada fear higher prices and fewer small, local stores.

The Food Mail Program was axed last October, to be replaced by a redesigned initiative in April 2011. The program, jointly run by Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, Canada Post, and Health Canada, provided food and sanitary items to isolated communities in the North at reduced postal rates. By cutting down on the transportation costs, food prices in the North were more affordable.

An INAC spokesperson told us that the program started around the 1960s through Canada Post’s air stage program. In 1991, responsibility over the program was transferred to INAC. Toward its end, the program was supporting 70,000 people in 80 communities each week, delivering over 18 million kilograms of food by mail annually.

The program required meticulous detail. Food arrived in shipping centres in the South, were packaged for sale and insulated to survive northern weather conditions. They were then driven to nine points of entry before being loaded into Canada Post aircraft, along with postal deliveries. Although 90 percent of the food was sent to communities in Nunavut and northern Quebec, the program served communities from Yukon to Labrador.

A 2007 video (which looks much more dated) explains the process in detail. The government subsidy meant that northern food prices were about 40 percent more than in the South—instead of double the price, which they would have been without the subsidy. (A Globe and Mail article reported on one community affected by the changes. Photos from the local grocery store include $30 jars of Cheez Whiz, $13 spaghetti, and $7 heads of cabbage.)

Last May, the Conservatives announced that three private companies would take on Canada Post’s role after concluding the crown corporation was too expensive.

The program was cut in October and will be replaced with the Nutrition North Canada initiative in April. The new program limits subsidies to “nutritious” perishable foods instead of “convenience” perishable foods (TV dinners, breaded meats) and limits eligibility of non-perishable foods. In the interim, the original Food Mail Program continues although subsidies have been discontinued for a list of items that aren’t covered under the new plan. Discontinued items include “whole pumpkins” and “croissants and garlic bread,” but also discontinued are water and prescription drugs.

An excellent CBC radio segment explored the implications of food costs for the largely Aboriginal populations who live in the isolated communities served by the program. With a genetic susceptability to Type 2 diabetes, a high rate of social assistance use, and a higher birth rate, these northern communities badly need access to nutritional foods. When a jug of fresh orange juice is 10 times the price of a bottle of Coca-Cola, affording a balanced diet is a struggle.

It’s this line of thinking that prompted changes to the subsidy system, but is it really the most effective action? Some advocate investment in summer agriculture programs, noting that areas in the Far North receive near-24 hour sunlight, making them even more fertile than some communities in the South.

But the loudest criticism of the new plan has to do with funding structure.

The old subsidy applied to the grocery item itself, allowing businesses and consumers to pay a fixed price for groceries, while costs such as air shipping were handled by the government. The new subsidy goes straight to retailers, leaving it to them to negotiate their shipping and air costs.

Smaller stores therefore face unfair competition. Larger chains like North Mart will benefit from economies of scale, but smaller stores—in the most remote areas with small populations—will face higher shipping costs—and thus higher prices. Ultimately this risks not only the livelihoods of food vendors, but also the purported goal of the subsidy program: the ability of Northerners to get a balanced diet.

On the cover of the May-June 2010 issue is Shawn Thompson‘s dispatch from Samboja Lestari, a controversial reforestation project in Borneo that aims to preserve orangutan populations, repair rainforests damaged by illegal logging, and support local farmers by fostering interdependence between the wildlife, forest, and people. Some say it could revolutionize conservation projects around the world; others aren’t convinced. Also in this issue: Lauren McKeon reports from Yellowknife on the shocking state of its prison, where lack of resources for psychiatric assessments has turned a whole wing of the facility into a de facto mental health ward. Stuck in legal limbo, the prisoners there wait—and then wait some more—for justice. And Patricia Bailey examines the work of a young crop of filmmakers who have come to be known as Quebec’s “new wave.” Eschewing the commercial, nostalgic hits of recent Quebec cinema, this new generation of directors and writers are embracing a stark aesthetic that illustrates the social alienation sweeping Canada’s Francophone province.

There’s lots more: Scott Weinstein calls out the  Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combaat Anti-Semitism; Andrea McDowell argues that we need better ways to counter misinformation about wind energy; Eva Salinas reports on the post-earthquake cleanup in Chile; Rob Thomas profiles a graffiti artist who ditched his toxic art supplies and started making his own eco-friendly paints; Darryl Whetter says Canadian Literature has become less feminist; Dorothy Woodend says the small size of Canada’s film community is hindering real criticism; and Dayanti Karunaratne investigates whether bamboo textiles  are really more environmentally friendly than their conventional counterparts.

PLUS: Gillian Bennett with tips on protesting the G20 in safety and style; Alex Consiglio on legendary pro-pot lawyer Alan Young; Lyndsie Bourgon on bike sharing programs; Anya Wassenberg on a U.S. Supreme Court battle between Ontario and Michigan over the future of the Great Lakes; Daniel Tseghay on the 50th anniversary of the “Year of Africa”; Graham F. Scott on the Harper government’s “women and children” agenda at the G8 and G20; Vivian Belik on minority governments; Jenn Hardy on Montreal band Po’ Girl; Chantaie Allick on Ottawa’s Snapdragon Gallery; Navneet Alang on how online communities throw together people who would never meet in real life, and more.

With a new short story by Jonathan Bennett and new poetry by Caroline Szpak.